


Parabola

by Beleriandings



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Gen, Ghosts, Ryokuryuu feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 17:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6618880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is he free now?</p><p>He puts that question away, to consider later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Step from the road

**Author's Note:**

> "Can we keep our bearing straight?  
> Or will we be blown off course?  
> Are we instruments of fate?  
> Do we really have a choice?" 
> 
> \- Woodkid, Boat Song

Jae-ha is four years old when his first front tooth starts to get loose, and he marvels at the sensation, rocking it backwards and forwards with a grubby finger. It hurts a little, but in a better way than most things that hurt; it is a pain that means something, he thinks, though he doesn’t really think any further than that. He can taste blood, too, but somehow it tastes different than blood in his mouth usually does. Maybe he’s the one who’s changed, he thinks solemnly.

He shows Garou, anyway. After all, it’s not everyday that you grow up so. He springs to his feet and squints up at Garou’s silhouette when the door opens, light flooding in all around him.

“Garou, look! My tooth is loose!” Jae-ha stands on the very tips of his toes, trying to draw himself up as tall as he can be. “Does that mean I’ll be a grown-up soon? It does, doesn’t it?” He stares up at Garou doubtfully. “G-Garou? Did you hear me?”

Garou says nothing. He seems frozen, like the surface of the water basin in winter. For a moment, Jae-ha pictures hairline cracks running through him. He immediately puts the notion from his mind; He’ll be grown soon, and maybe they’ll even let him free like Garou. He’ll have to act very grown up, and grown-ups don’t have silly imaginings, Jae-ha is certain.

He frowns; Garou still hasn’t moved. Maybe he hasn’t heard? “Garou, look!” he says again, tugging on the ragged hem of Garou’s tunic and pointing at his tooth. “It’s loose! I’m getting bigger, I’m not a baby anymore!”

“Oh, is that the case?” Garou doesn’t move as he speaks, his face still frozen hard. His eyes are very cold too, today. That and the tone of his voice is what makes Jae-ha edge backwards a little, fear immediately starting inside him, a deep fear - quick and instinctual as the hitch in his breath, as his heartbeat - that has been with him all his life, born of some things he can remember and some that he can’t. “Is that true? Are you really so much older, Jae-ha?” Garou’s voice is low and quiet, dangerously so.

“Y-Yes” says Jae-ha, suddenly doubtful. Was he wrong? He had thought that Garou would be happy to see how Jae-ha was growing up strong and brave, like Garou himself. He had thought he knew, but maybe he is wrong. He is sometimes wrong. … _I am often wrong._ Still, he carries on. “Yes, I will be five years old in two moons!” He points at his tooth. “And soon I’ll have my grown-up teeth!”

The light flooding in around Garou is too bright, the silhouette outlined by it too dark; Jae-ha doesn’t see the blow coming until it had connected with his mouth, sending him sprawling backwards onto the hard floor, lights bursting before his eyes as he hits the side of his head painfully against the stone. He can taste blood, a lot more than before, filling his mouth.

This blood tastes the same, now, as it always had before.

Still, there is more pain, and as he opens his mouth and cries out, then bites down again, he feels something in his mouth crunch, a sharp pain in his gum.

“You want to lose your baby teeth, huh? You want to grow up? Is that what you want, brat?” Garou is breathing fast, his fist slowly dropping down to his side, his eyes wide and panicked. “Well, there you go. Now don’t bother me with it anymore.”

Jae-ha cowers back, letting out a little whimper as he runs his tongue over the place where, just a moment ago, his loose tooth had been. Where, in fact, both his front teeth had been. His mouth is filling with blood and he can feel tears coming to his eyes, burning tears of pain. He fights them back; after all, hadn’t he, just a moment before, been thinking of how he would be grown up soon? Grown-ups aren’t supposed to cry, after all.

Or maybe they are; Jae-ha has never been too clear on that point. Garou is grown up, and he cries all the time. He is crying right now in fact, as he slides down the wall opposite Jae-ha and hunches forwards, ropes of straggling dark green hair falling forward over his face, which is buried in his hands. Though not before Jae-ha has seen the glint of tears on Garou’s cheeks, tracking down through the grime against his grey-pale skin. There are cuts on Garou’s knuckles, Jae-ha notices, little dark smears of blood, though whether it is Jae-ha’s blood or Garou’s own he doesn’t know. Perhaps it is both, he thinks.

Jae-ha spits out a mouthful of blood and broken front teeth at Garou’s feet, waiting to see if he’ll react, ready to fling himself backwards to the far corner at the slightest sign of movement. When he doesn’t, Jae-ha, tentatively, goes to sit beside Garou on the woven matt, drawing his bony knees up to his chin. He picks up one of the teeth from the floor and squints at it curiously for a moment; it is smaller than he had always thought it was. His face hurts, his mouth feeling unfamiliar and strange. 

Still, he supposes he would have lost them anyway, soon enough.

“Sorry Garou” he mumbles dutifully, his voice coming oddly with his missing teeth. He will have to be more careful, he knows, when speaking of growing up; he tucks the thought away, folding it and placing it with all the other things to be wary of, that might upset Garou.

Garou lowers his hands, turning to stare at him. There are still tears in his eyes, face showing mingled pain and revulsion. Jae-ha wonders what he could have done to deserve that look; it must be _something_ , surely.

“Why are you sorry?” Garou rasps, his voice brittle. “It’s going to happen anyway. You’re going to grow up, and I’m going to die. There’s nothing either of us can do about it.” Garou curls his hands into fists, and Jae-ha starts, but Garou is only sinking his nails into his palms, tendons in his skinny wrists standing out starkly against his skin. “Then it’ll happen to you, one day. One day some new kid will be born, and that’ll be your _life_ , you know?” he waves his hand in the air before him. “Just… gone.” Garou sighs, then reaches out to ruffle Jae-ha’s hair. Jae-ha stays utterly still, frozen like a rabbit before a hunter. Yet even so he is glad of the touch, its comparative gentleness like a balm and a comfort, a reprieve. “It’s going to hurt though, kid. Every bit of it, every damn moment of every damn day. May as well be prepared. Get it over with quickly.” A bitter, humourless laugh. 

Jae-ha doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just nods. He knows all this already, has known it for longer than he could remember. The ghosts in the chains had told him, he supposes, though they had never said a word.

“Go to sleep, Jae-ha” says Garou. The harshness is gone from his voice, replaced by a great blankness, a nothingness made of defeat, as he runs his fingers through Jae-ha’s hair. Garou laughs again, a painful, rattling sound. “Nothing will have changed by tomorrow, I promise you.”

 

The ghosts are always there. Jae-ha can’t always see them, and he doesn’t even know _how_ he knows that they’re ghosts, as such, but they’re always there. In his dreams, their chains rattle ceaselessly from dusk until dawn, until Garou comes to wake him from his uneasy sleep.

The ghosts have no voices, only the rattling of their chains.

He doesn’t feel sorry for them. Or rather, he doesn’t _want_ to feel sorry for them; their plight is the same as his, so he supposes it would only be natural. Perhaps he should, in fact. But he tries not to. Pity is too hard, too much effort, and it costs him too much. If he’s learned anything in his short life, it’s to never give away too much of himself if he wants to carry on.

He tries to push it away. It doesn’t really work.

The sound of rattling chains is always in his head, even in the time before he is put in chains of his own, because he is too small to fit into them. Besides, in those days they aren’t really needed anyway, because Garou is fast and strong, and can catch Jae-ha easily when he tries to run, to fly.

Later, the chains become his own too, as familiar as the voices of the ghosts in the night.

He learns that five generations have been kept in this house, since the village was closed away from the world. That’s about three generations of the other villagers, who live longer.

He had thought there were more, but perhaps he’s just not very good at counting. Or perhaps you can’t count ghosts in the same way as anything else. Perhaps they all come here, when they are dead, he thinks.

Perhaps that is what the Ryokuryuu blood is; just the ghosts of all the dead ones, chained forever to the one who bears the blood now. His dragon leg, then, is there only to taunt him, to make the fact that he will never escape all the more agonising. He hates the very sight of it.

Chains rattle in the night, tendrils of dark green wrapping around him, so he can’t move for several seconds after he wakes up, panic and disorientation paralysing him as reality comes back.

Reality is not much different.

 

He wonders, later, whether he had ever thought he would actually succeed, all those times he tried to escape. Certainly, he had never thought about what he planned to do _after_ he escaped the village. Even when he truly made it away, he had no idea at all of what he wanted to do, or even where there was in the world that he could go. 

Garou is dead, he knows. He wonders if Garou will become one of the ghosts now, or if they only appear to torment the current Ryokuryuu. Jae-ha doesn’t know because he doesn’t see the ghosts, not here. It is odd, if only because he can’t remember a time when he didn’t fall asleep to the sound of their rattling chains. It bothers him a little. If Jae-ha isn’t in the hut in the village with the chains, then where are the ghosts? Are they free now? Somehow he doesn’t think so. 

Is he free now?

He puts that question away, to consider later. 


	2. To the sea

Jae-ha understands the amount of vertical space in the sky in an intuitive way, that other people, he realises, do not. Everyone else is confined to forward and back, left and right; Jae-ha has up and down, too, and he revels in it. The sky and the wind are the most beautiful things he has ever known. 

He flies; or rather, it is not really flying, but more like propelling himself into the air. His body follows the same sort of trajectory as an arrow, as a thrown blade; he knows where he will land, can control it from the moment he begins, but not while he is in the air. Once he’s set on a path through the sky, he cannot change it. Unless of course there is a sudden gust of wind, or he collides with something else in the air. 

Otherwise, though, his course is set. 

Still, he is good at setting courses. He grows strong, once he is free. Captain Gigan is hard and stern, but cares about him fiercely. He doesn’t really understand why, but he’s not about to question it. 

He learns to fight, Gigan’s knives flashing from his fingers like the bright silver fish that swim in the harbour. He isn’t good at it, at first. He’s clumsy and uncoordinated for a while, a gangly-tall reed of an adolescent who grows out of his clothes too quickly, now that he’s able to eat every day. His limbs are stretched out by the week, the only thing about him that is sure and balanced is his dragon leg, he thinks resentfully. But still, he wants to learn to throw knives; he wants to learn to fight like Gigan does, so that he can make her proud of him, make himself truly a part of the crew. 

He practices on the deck of the ship, then jumping between the deck and the rigging. He’s always the one who is most often in the crow’s nest, anyway. 

When the knives miss their mark, and fall into the blue-green waters of the harbour, Gigan makes him go and get them. He is already a strong swimmer by now, and he becomes much better at diving like this, much better at holding his breath. But Gigan is trying to teach him another lesson, too; when you throw a knife, you cannot easily take it back. He learns deliberation, discernment and refinement of his aim. He learns to wait, to consider and think and use his judgement in a split second, even as he flies through the air.

He does master it, in the end; the knives become like an extension of himself; he understands their paths through the air intuitively, and how to use them to best effect begins to come as second nature. He pictures their paths in his head, at first, paths traced back to intersect with his own flight through the air. After he’s been practicing a while, though, it becomes muscle memory, written into how he moves and reacts, rather than conscious thought. It is elegant and beautiful and he delights in it. 

He grows older and he learns; about the world, about the town of Awa, about himself. He learns where to find pleasure: pleasure with another person, pleasure in music, in conversation and drink and good company. He learns to charm, and he learns to listen. He learns what it is to have a family, or something that approximates one more than Garou and the ghosts ever did. 

Sometimes, he almost forgets the path that he has been set upon from the moment of his birth. 

Almost. 

Distractions, distractions, he will think sometimes, as he lies in his hammock on the ship, listening to the sounds of the ship at night. Sleep has never come very easily to Jae-ha, but at least the sounds of the sleeping crew, the creaking of the ship, the shushing of the calm waves or the buffeting winds and thunder of a storm - at least these sounds are better than the rattle of chains. Ghosts cannot cross water, he once heard; he thinks maybe it’s true, and he is grateful for it. He could stay on the water his whole life, he thinks sometimes, and would let no one stop him. He never has to stop running. It’s what his dragon leg is best for, after all. He can run for all the time that is left to him. 

He wonders too, sometimes, how long that will be. 


	3. To the sky

It’s an old adage that what goes up must come down, and Jae-ha knows the truth of that more intimately than most people. 

He is twenty-five years old when _she_ comes; the girl with the red hair, the king that he had thought he could run from his whole life. 

In hindsight, he realises that it was foolish of him to ever think he could cut out a different path for himself. 

Yet he does not follow Yona only because his blood commands it. 

Sometimes he wishes he did; maybe it would hurt less. 

_(“It’s going to hurt though, kid. Every bit of it, every damn moment of every damn day.”)_

He wonders, sometimes, as he listens to his new-found brothers breathing in their sleep around him at night, whether he is going to die soon. He had always known he would die young, would crumple and wilt away slowly like a plant kept in the dark. 

Sometimes he wishes his successor would hurry up and be born already, for waiting is agonising. He hates the thought that he understands Garou a little better now, but in the black of the night, when all else is silent, he sometimes does. His own body feels a fragile vessel, on a course he is powerless to control and cannot stop, borne up by air too cloudy to see through. It is not a concept that appeals to him.

In the day, though, things seem a little better. In the day everything is bright and colourful, the others filling up his mind and heart. Distraction, he thinks desperately, knowing hope will only cause him pain. It was a lesson he learned long ago, as a child haunted by the ghosts with their rattling chains.

_But is it really so unreasonable? Is Yona not the one I am supposedly born to serve? If there are gods, could they really just let me die now? After finding the closest I will ever have to brothers? …After finding her?_

Thoughts like that were always dangerous. Jae-ha holds off on thinking about it, waiting and watching to see. 

If there is a way to alter his course, he will take it, once he knows the path that is set for him. Otherwise, he can do nothing but let the threads of his destiny lead him on, and finds, to his surprise, that he doesn’t find the idea as repellent as would once have.

Either way, he always keeps his eyes turned towards the sky. 


End file.
